


he doesn't look a thing like jesus, but he talks like a gentleman

by MeddleLyn



Series: all i hear is whiskey lullabies there to cradle me to sleep [3]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Daniel's history I guess, Gen, I just wanted to write him because reasons?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 08:55:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21804631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeddleLyn/pseuds/MeddleLyn
Summary: A little character study on Daniel and his story.
Series: all i hear is whiskey lullabies there to cradle me to sleep [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1178237
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	he doesn't look a thing like jesus, but he talks like a gentleman

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to the song the title comes from in the car the other day and I just. My mind went to Daniel. The song's a sort of love song but those lines just Fit Him.
> 
> When You Were Young - The Killers

Camp Cambell wasn’t Daniel’s first go around the block. It wasn’t the first time he’d failed, been arrested. It was, though, the only place he just kept haunting. All the other summer camps, the other churches and followers and graveyards and failed attempts had all faded with time. 

He thinks that some part of him died in the camp next to Lake Lilac and he just can’t seem to move on without it.

But sometimes, on the days he’s locked in the county jail, the time he spends in the woods now and again, as he schemes to recruit the Wood Scouts, he thinks about his past. The other failed poisonings.

The ones that didn’t fail.

He thinks about his rough start, how being bounced around from foster home to foster home made him numb inside. And how when he accidentally poured something his foster parent was allergic to into his wine, he felt something. He felt something when the doctors told him that he wasn’t going to make it through the night. He felt something when he went back to the house to collect his things and saw the carpet stained purple.

He sought that feeling for the rest of his life. Is still seeking it.

Daniel is an adrenaline junkie with a different rush, an addict hooked on satisfaction, a beast that hungers for such a fleeting emotion that he’ll never hold on to.

But he thinks himself God. He looks in the mirror in prison, sees his reflection in the rippling stream, and sees a saviour. He pictures himself a poet who writes his sonnets and verses in blood. He pictures himself as the prophet of a religion born from an intense, desperate dream.

He thinks back to the first few goes, working up to larger groups with an off putting, yet alluring charisma and an unbreakable will. He seduces people looking for meaning or a purpose with promises of redemption and safety. He infiltrates each group and they all end the same way. Another mass suicide on the news, another mass grave in the woods, another batch of greiving families.

Then he got caught.

The first time he nearly panics himself into a corner. And then in a sudden moment of clarity, spoken by a court appointed lawyer turned messenger from his lord in his mind. They have nothing on him. They have a sole survivor of a tragedy. They have a harmless looking man who favors the lighter colors of the spectrum.

But ultimately, they have nothing. He walks away from that charge. And the next and the next until they start putting ads in the paper with his face and Dangerous written next to it. 

And then Camp Cambell happens. It’s his own fault really, he became too invested in defeating that man who seemed too cheery not to have internalized trauma. In the end, he is caught. He drinks the poison himself and suddenly he’s in the back of an ambulance wondering if there still exists a purple stained carpet in that old house. 

He is convicted for the first time, gets out on good behaviour and strategically placed funds. He needs to feel again. But he can’t move on. 

Somewhere, there is still a purple stain on the grounds of Camp Cambell. Somewhere, there is a piece of Daniel he’ll never be able to find there.

He’ll never feel again.


End file.
